What Happens After Reading History
"Change does not occur with backlash—at least any change worth having—and that backlash is an indicator that the change is...powerful..." - Alicia Garza, 'Four Hundred Souls'
Nazis unwelcome: here’s my post about moving this blog off of Substack soon. I might put this stinger on every post until then to try to irritate Nazi Sympathizer Hamish McKenzie. I might forget/get bored and stop. Not today though!
What are my principles? Not just what do I think is worth fighting for, but what do I think life should look like? Do I have proactive change I’d like to see in the world, or do I simply react to things I don’t like?
Personally, I do have answers—varying in lengths on the brevity-to-longwindedness continuum—to all of these questions. But reading so much history and trying to take in so many different perspectives (the historical subjects’, the authors’, the authors’ imagined audiences’, my own, anyone else I might talk to about these events) forces you to ask these questions. When Zinn begins his book openly wondering if Indigenous society was actually superior to Western society and ends it with a call for a quiet-yet-sweeping revolution of the 99%, when you read what has been done/what is still being done to Black and Indigenous people in this country and wonder how there can possibly be a way forward, you are forced to ask these questions of your principles.
These readings do have me believing in quiet revolution, but also increase my feelings of urgency for revolution. And quiet revolutions can have far-reaching, radical goals.
Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five | Part Six
Read This Week
A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn: “Carter-Reagan-Bush: The Bipartisan Consensus,” “The Unreported Resistance,” and “The Coming Revolt of the Guards,” “Afterwod: On the Clinton Presidency”
Four Hundred Souls edited by Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain: Conclusion: “Our Ancestors’ Wildest Dreams” by Keisha N. Blain
An Indigenous People’s History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz: “Conclusion: The Future of the United States”
Thoughts
Are we having a historical moment right now? Climate change. Black Lives Matter culminating in the 2020 Summer of ACAB. COVID-19. Genocide in Palestine. The threat of AI, or otherwise out-of-control technology. Income inequality. The global ascension of white nationalism, with Trump-Biden II looming. Or is history a long unfurling of moments, any “peace” simply a different part of the same wave?
You want to avoid your perception of history lining up with your own autobiography. But I do think things have intensified since all of these books were finished. “You could call this book an Obama-era artifact,” Dunbar-Ortiz says in her intro in the tenth anniversary edition. Zinn last updated People’s History in 2005 (my copy is 1995). Even Four Hundred Souls doesn’t know what Covid will do. As I’m writing in 2024, we don’t really know if AI’s bullshit will be propped up into lasting success (like cars) or completely collapse (like NFTs). We don’t know what an international court ruling on a genocide looks like. We don’t know if the US will elect Donald Trump a second time. One thing I do know: the systems that created climate change, the War on Terror, the recession, the failed response to Covid, and the threat of AI are going to be in place for the foreseeable future.
When I say the United States of America cannot and should not continue as currently constructed, I’m not arguing for immediate, violent revolution, or breakup of the states, or everyone to go back to whatever continent their people originated on, or whatever. When I say the United States of America cannot and should not continue as currently constructed, I mean we cannot continue this infinite growth model, we cannot continue imperialist bullying, we cannot continue leaving our people to flail, we cannot continue to be so wanton and destructive. When I say the United States of America cannot and should not continue as currently constructed, I believe I’m speaking from uncontroversial, necessary fact.
What should a government do? Does a government exist to enrich a few monetarily, to flex its muscles militarily, and through a combination of football game Air Force flyovers and a razor-thin line between thriving and homelessness, subdue its populace into extracting for it? Does a government exist to pursue “human progress” or “spread civilization” at all costs?
Both Dunbar-Ortiz and Zinn end with searing condemnations of US militarism. Four Hundred Souls ends with the Black Lives Matter movement—a movement in large part protesting the militarizing of police—at its forefront. Imperialism, with its unquenchable accounting departments and vainglorious dorks cosplaying as statesmen and/or action heroes, pulls the skin off of positive-coded things to reveal rot underneath. “Pioneer” “American spirit” “explorer” “war hero”—how could these have ever possibly been considered badges of honor? Even my metaphors are war-coded.
Dunbar-Ortiz lays out the case that the US’s foreign policy since Vietnam has been a sort of globalized version of the Indian wars of the 18th and 19th centuries. The US military or intelligence community is deployed anywhere deemed an impediment to order (either aggressively, like Iraq; passively, like Bikini Atoll; or imaginarily, like Latin America, Korea, and Vietnam). People get killed, communities destroyed, and back stateside, a complicit populace is sold an endless drip of cultural propaganda that we live in the greatest, most evolved, most exalted civilization the world has ever known. Meanwhile, the rest of the world shakes their head because they always knew the Empire in Star Wars was based on the US. Dunbar-Ortiz quotes extensively from Robert D. Kaplan, and please have a puke bag ready as you read this:
“By the turn of the twenty-first century the United States military had already appropriated the entire earth, and was ready to flood the most obscure areas of it with troops at a moment’s notice.
“The Pentagon divided the planet into five area commands—similar to the way that the Indian Country of the American West had been divided…according to the soldiers…the comparison was apt. ‘Welcome to Injun Country’ was the refrain I heard from troops from Colombia to the Philippines, including Afghanistan and Iraq. To be sure, the problem for the American military was less [Islamic] fundamentalism than anarchy. The War on Terrorism was really about taming the frontier.”
When you consider this quote in the context that bloodthirsty colonizers destroyed a continent previously tended to by the greatest land-keepers the planet has ever seen, when you consider this quote in the context of Mark Zuckerberg buying up Hawaiian land because he maybe rightly fears an apocalypse is coming even though native Hawaiians are begging people to stop coming to the island because tourism is destroying wildlife, when you consider the existential threat of climate change, it makes this extensive quote from Zinn on the military and climate harder to handle:
“In June 1992 more than a hundred countries participated in the Earth Summit environmental conference in Brazil. Statistics showed that the armed forces of the world were responsible for two-thirds of the gases that depleted the ozone layer. But when it was suggested that the Earth Summit consider the effects of the military on environmental degradation, the United States delegation objected and the suggestion was defeated.”
That’s bad enough on its own. The US is so bloodthirsty and so powerful that it views its own military as more important than the planet on which it operates. It’s made all the more worse after reading the preceding 20 or so pages of the US fucking up Vietnam for no good reason, the expansion of US military interventionism in favor of right-wing dictatorships, and a general policy of “swing our dicks around and hurt random people because even though we left millions in dead in Vietnam, we ‘lost’ so gotta look tough now” bullyball.
No, the system that conquered “the Indians” couldn’t fail, and it had to be proven everywhere. Hence the School of the Americas. Hence our presence in the Middle East. Hell, John Woo used statues from court rulings on settler violence against Indigenous people in the 19th century to justify torturing Iraqis in 2003. That’s right, our proud history of Indigenous-killing led to the justification of war crimes in our lifetimes. At least it was a moral war but hey, Dubya wanted to impress Dad.
There is absolutely zero redeeming quality to any US military operation in the last 75 years, and it is killing the planet.
Honestly, all those right wingers who don’t want our kids to learn history because it will make them hate the United States? The conservatives are absolutely right. I hold no positive feelings in my heart for this country, my personal Overton Window has greatly shifted so that I am even more out of step with the average citizen, and my outlook on the future and our abilities to meet the moment is as low as its ever been.
What should a government do? Does a government exist to enrich its citizens, to set the table for them so that they can lead fulfilling, healthy, safe, and dignified lives? Does a government exist to ensure the land stays available and usable for the seventh generation? Can a government exist that steers its populace towards work that benefits the collective while being less taxing on the individual?
So what to do? Honestly, I think something like a century’s worth of conventional wisdom has to be erased. We need radical re-imaginings of what it means to be alive, what we owe each other, and what constitutes happiness. Collectively, the people of the United States are controlled by this imperialist mindset, this urge to never let things be, to always believe another dollar can be made, the call to change “functional” to “productive.” CAN WE LIVE? No, we cannot—these scraps won’t fight over themselves.
The United States, as currently constructed, cannot continue. We need to discard our valorization of Daniel Boone and Teddy Roosevelt. Let’s celebrate the resilience of Maroon communities. The vision of Tecumseh. The thoughtfulness of a priest who would break into a nuclear plant and damage bomb parts. If we’re not constantly chasing the next Silicon Valley convenience scam or constantly making trucks bigger or constantly stationing thousands of troops on hundreds of bases worldwide for no public reason? Then maybe we can have healthcare, libraries, public transit, meaningful work. That meaningful work can include working with the rightful owners of the land to find new ways combat climate change.
Everyone brings it home: Zinn explicitly makes the point I’ve been making—that there is a them and an us, there is an Establishment and the People, and they want us divided—before going into full-throated advocacy for a (quiet) socialist revolution that comes down to the 99% realizing their power against the 1%. Keisha N. Blain’s “Our Ancestors’ Wildest Dreams” essay to close out Four Hundred Souls plays on an (uplifting, positive) Black aphorism while insisting “full freedom” is still far away. Dunbar-Ortiz lays bare the “socialism or barbarism” choice by convincingly connecting all US foreign policy—the guerrilla terrorism of US Special Forces, the obvious blood for oil plays, the meddling in Central and South America—to the initial Indian Wars of the 18th century. When we say the US was founded on genocide, that’s incomplete. The US was founded on exploitative, extractive genocide…and the idea that all people are created equal, endowed with certain inalienable, y’know.
Whether or not the founding promise of the United States was a lie, a lot of people believed it for a long time. A lot of people still believe it, or at least believe in it, and believe it is achievable. I am one of those who thinks true equality is achievable. Climate change, the imperialist threat of exponential growth, and the vapid anti-humanity of Silicon Valley stand in our way, though. Which is a way of saying, the United States of America, as a capitalist entity dependent on extraction, cannot continue.
So what’s the quiet revolution? Quiet quitting, for one. Supporting LGBTQ+ people even as trans panicky freaks take up the nation’s airtime. Killing the part of your brain that even thinks “diversity hire?” whenever you see a person of color. Refusing to sign up for the military. Refusing to come in on a Saturday at work. Understanding unions are good. Not calling the police. Finding some sort of mutual aid group—food bank, DV shelter, park clean up crew—and committing to it. Getting involved in local politics. Being conscientious of where you get your news. Being conscientious of how much you have that you do not need, how much you are wasting, whether you can cut down on deliveries to your house or endless gadget updates or other unnecessary things that add to your carbon footprint. Understanding that there are better ways of living than the ones being presented to us.
I am not concluding this study as well as any of the authors I read. That said, I feel like a changed person. I feel compelled to volunteer somewhere. I feel like I will raise my son differently than I was raised. I feel like a deep study of this country’s history—understanding the people not discussed in school textbooks—is something everyone should do. If it was my clumsy blog that led you to that realization, maybe that’s an indictment on this country, too.
Sorry you got an email,
Chris